Abiyoyo: Based on a South African Lullaby and Folk Story
- Book Review,
by Pete Seeger
From Publishers Weekly
Folksinger, musician and storyteller Seeger first told this story-song to his children over 20 years ago and has now written it as a book. It's based on a South African lullaby and folksong, yet it's too rollicking and exciting to lull a child to sleep. A ukulele-playing boy and his magician father are always getting into mischief, so they are banished to the edge of their town. There they have an opportunity to redeem themselves when Abiyoyo, a horrible, people-eating giant approaches the village. The story is so lyrical that Seeger's voice can be heard on every page. Hays, in his first picture book, creates a beautiful multicultural village. His sea of many-colored faces and costumes is exhilarating and expressive. The giant Abiyoyo is massive and jagged-toothed, but childlike and nonthreatening. The book is a triumph of storytelling and art. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3 The words in this story-song flow along with the same ease and naturalness as Seeger's well-known telling on the recording, Abiyoyo and Other Story Songs (Folkways, 1967). There are only minor changes in this version, and the style reflects an oral rather than a literary tradition as Seeger switches from past to present tense in the text. Seeger combines his sense of humor and drama to turn disturbing events to high-spirited fun, as a father and son, turned out by their neighbors as troublemakers, use the very objects that bother peoplethe boy's clinking-clonking ukelele and the father's magic wandto obliviate Abiyoyo, monster on the loose, and so come back into community favor. The tale contains levels of meaning and powerful metaphors for those who choose to pursue them. If Hays' oil-on-linen illustrations are not always successful, it may be that they seem too studied when matched with Seeger's spontaneous, colloquial style. For example, the father is a magician in the simplest sense, yet Hays renders a "magic shop" in the background, with doves, rabbits, silk hatsnot the stuff of most folk tales. In peopling the village, too, he seems to be laboring to make a global statement, surrounding the black boy and his father with people of all races, places, beliefs. His Abiyoyo is a shadowy, looming figure against the blood-red sky, at first a faceless force, growing larger, and finally a towering glaring figure full of terrible witless energy. What is surprising about this Abiyoyo is the lack of earthiness. He is not sinew and muscle, but an automaton with a metallic gleam, the huge overalls he wears seeming an incongruous folksy touch. Still, there are also some very fine illustrations here, and this is a book worthy of attention. It merits a wide audience. Susan Powers, Berkeley Carroll Street School, BrooklynCopyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Publishers Weekly The book is a triumph of storytelling and art.
Book Description
No one wants to hear the little boy play his ukelele anymore...Clink, clunk, clonk. And no one wants to watch his father make things disappear...Zoop! Zoop! Until the day the fearsome giant Abiyoyo suddenly appears in town, and all the townspeople run for their lives and the lives of their children! Nothing can stop the terrible giant Abiyoyo, nothing, that is, except the enchanting sound of the ukelele and the mysterious power of the magic wand.
Card catalog description
Banished from the town for making mischief, a little boy and his father are welcomed back when they find a way to make the dreaded giant Abiyoyo disappear.
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